While treatment of disease has progressed far in the last century, many current treatments leave much to be desired when considering the overall welfare of the patient. For instance, currently, chemotherapy and radiation treatment remain the most widely used forms of cancer treatment known. However, such treatments are generic in their attack on the patient's system, attacking both healthy as well as diseased tissues and systems.
Many pathogenic agents, such as cancer cells, for example, use naturally occurring cellular surface receptors, primarily integrins, not only to invade healthy tissue but also for motility within the host body, which, in the case of cancer, can lead to metastasis. Integrins are part of a large family of cell adhesion receptors that are involved in cell/extracellular matrix as well as cell/cell interaction. Integrins are the main method that cells utilize to bind to and respond to the extracellular matrix. Functionally, integrin receptors are composed of two transmembrane glycoprotein subunits, an α subunit and a β subunit. Presently, 16α and 8β subunits have been identified.
Pathogens which contain and utilize integrin receptors for interaction with the extracellular matrix or cells of a host can exhibit highly efficient invasion of and motility within an organism due to the nature of the integrin/ligand interactions. Specifically, individual integrin receptors bind their ligands with low affinity (on the order of 10−6 to 10−9 liters/mole), however, they also exist on cell surfaces in very high concentration, generally 10 to 100 times greater than other types of cell-surface receptors. Following suitable stimulation, integrins on a cell surface will cluster and form hemidesmosomes which can provide a focal contact for adhesion. The combined weak affinities of the multiple integrins at the focal contact can give rise to a spot on the cell surface with suitable adhesive capacity to form an adherence to the ligand. This binding motif provides a method for a single integrin-containing cell to bind simultaneously but weakly to a large number of matrix molecules while still maintaining the ability to explore the cellular environment. The low affinity integrin/ligand binding motif thus provides an efficient route for integrin-containing pathogens to bind to and invade healthy cells while still maintaining cell motility for further invasion.
What is needed in the art are novel treatment methods for disease that can specifically target the pathogens of the disease. Specifically, what is needed in the art are treatment methods that can interfere with the binding processes of the pathogens and prevent initial invasion of healthy cells and motility of the pathogens within the body. Additionally, what is needed in the art is a method to specifically target and bind pathogens with disease fighting agents, such as chemotherapy agents, while not grossly interfering with the healthy systems and tissue that the disease has not yet affected.